The Ememy Within

Such scientific expertise that I can lay claim to is the subject of cytokines. Cytokines are small proteins or peptides that act as regulatory molecules within the body, usually thought of in terms of the immune system but in fact operating throughout the body. Get sick and feel sleepy and not want to eat? Blame a cytokine, not the bug. Feel feverish? Cytokines at work again. They regulate nearly every aspect of our body. Layer on top of this countless neuroregulators and hormones. In fact, the concept of psychoneuroimmunology (no, I didn't make that up) studies how the immune system, nervous system and endocrine system are in fact inextricably tied together. Endocrine glands are served by nerves, cytokines affect the nervous system, and so on. Terribly complicated, terribly interesting.

When we think of biological warfare or biological terrorism, our initial culprit (besides the perpetrator) is some sort of microorganism. The human body is capable of exquisite self-regulation (see above), but pathogens have evolved ways of subverting those regulatory mechanisms to their advantage. We become infected and the bugs use tools that damage or destroy the immune system and increase secretions so they'll be more easily spread. We currently have the upper hand on the microbial world - or most of it, anyway - by dint of antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines. Get rid of the infection and things return to normal.

But what if an adversary turned our bodies against themselves? For example, what if someone found a way to activate all the cytokines at once, a condition known as a cytokine storm? Very quickly, the body would go into shock, followed by death. (This has already happened with at least one experimental drug.) What if they devised ways to induce sleep (like the hostage "rescue" operation by the Russians in 2002 where they killed all but one of the 117 hostages with aerosolized fentanyl) or paranoia? (MK-ULTRA ring a bell?). What if the bad guys figured out how to subvert the immune system's self-recognition mechanisms so that the immune system turned against itself? This happens to varying degrees all the time in autoimmune diseases, but could feasibly be engineered to occur on a large scale, debilitating a population and overwhelming its medical services.

Bioregulator weapons would be nasty beyond anything we currently face. Neuroregulators and some physiological regulators would act almost instantly, and since they would be designed to target fundamental biological processes it would be difficult or impossible to prevent them. Done "correctly", they might be difficult to detect. While millions (billions?) of dollars are currently being spent to prevent and treat a tiny handful of potential biological threats, creative minds are certainly already at work finding more sinister ways to take us down and no amount of money can obviate that threat.

Sleep well.

--R.V. House